Bernard Schoenburg: Blagojevich faces editorial call for recall

Wednesday

Oct 31, 2007 at 12:01 AMOct 31, 2007 at 9:05 AM

Let’s assume you are governor. It probably wouldn’t be a pleasant feeling to open up the Sunday edition of the largest newspaper in the state and see a discussion of how inept you are, along with a call for a constitutional amendment to oust you via recall.

Bernard Schoenburg

Let’s assume you are governor. It probably wouldn’t be a pleasant feeling to open up the Sunday edition of the largest newspaper in the state and see a discussion of how inept you are, along with a call for a constitutional amendment to oust you via recall.

Of course, our governor is ROD BLAGOJEVICH, and who knows how he reacted when the Chicago Tribune did just that last weekend? I long ago realized that the only thing predictable about Blagojevich is that he isn’t. He does like a fight, so maybe he enjoyed the fighting words. But I doubt it.

With Blagojevich showing “no inclination to resign,” the editorial stated, and since it’s doubtful that legislators could bring themselves to the “drastic action” of impeachment, the realistic question, the editorial stated, is:

“Given the multiple ineptitudes of Rod Blagojevich – his reckless financial stewardship, his dictatorial antics, his penchant for creating political enemies – should citizens create a new way to terminate a chief executive who won’t, or can’t do his job?”

Before asking readers to share their own thoughts on the matter, the editorial called for Illinois to join 18 other states that have provisions for recall – the power to remove state officials from office midterm through a popular vote – in their constitutions.

“Having endured the Blagojevich era, we believe voters never should have to endure another one like it,” the editorial stated. “They instead should have the power to recall an inept governor.”

The governor’s legacy, the editorial states, is “of federal and state investigations of alleged cronyism and corruption in the steering of pension fund investments to political donors, in the subversion of state hiring laws, in the awarding of state contracts, in matters as personal as that mysterious $1,500 check made out to the governor’s then 7-year-old daughter by a friend whose wife had been awarded a state job.”

Democratic control of the governorship and the legislature has created an “extraordinary opportunity” to deal with issues like school accountability, school funding and “a meaningful attack on … swelling pension indebtedness.”

“Instead,” the Trib wrote, “taxpayers are bankrolling an endless game of chicken between legislative leaders and a governor known to boast about his self-diagnosed ‘testicular virility.’ Blagojevich has clumsily tried to recast himself as a prairie populist, bashing his state’s employers. He has borrowed from the future to cover costs of state government today. …”

“Blagojevich is an intentionally divisive governor and a profoundly unhelpful influence. He is unwilling or unable to see the chaos all around him. This year, lawmakers failed to make progress on schools, on state pension reform, on any number of critical matters. …”

“As awareness builds that the governor’s obstructionism has kept Illinois from meaningful action on education reform, school funding, government ethics, public pension indebtedness and other challenges, more voters may warm to the notion of firing their inept governor.”

The editorial noted that, “Paradox of paradoxes,” Blagojevich supports recall, along with some people who have been critical of Blagojevich, including Lt. Gov. PAT QUINN and Sen. DAN CRONIN, R-Elmhurst, sponsor of a proposed constitutional amendment for recall.

The editorial’s call for reader opinions generated more than 1,200 responses, some of which were printed on a full page on Tuesday. Others are online.

A Tuesday editorial said the “overwhelming majority” of those who responded favor recall.
“Though a handful of readers rose to the governor’s defense, they were shouted down by hundreds of others – including many who prefaced responses with ‘I’m a lifelong Democrat’ or ‘I voted for Blagojevich twice’ – who said he should go.”

The Sunday Tribune, as of September 2006, had a circulation of about 938,000, and the paper estimates its Sunday readership at 2.7 million. So even if some people only checked out the comics, a lot of people saw the initial editorial. And with political news zipping around the Web, on the Trib’s own site and blogs and emails, the broadside got plenty of views.

The reaction from the governor’s office?

“Governor Blagojevich is doing what he told people he would – coming to Springfield, fighting for working families including expanding access to healthcare and investing more money in education,” said spokeswoman REBECCA RAUSCH via email.

She also passed along a statement from former GOP Gov. JIM THOMPSON, saying the Trib’s idea of adding recall would “introduce only more instability in state government and is not worthy of your editorial page.”

Thompson asks if other elected officials would also be subject to recall, and he questions the logic of blaming the governor for what lawmakers did not do.

“The last time I looked at the Illinois Constitution, the Governor had no power to initiate legislation or vote on its passage,” Thompson said.

“I am as disappointed as any other citizen at the lack of progress in Springfield,” Thompson wrote. “The Governor and the leaders of the General Assembly ought to sit down in the Mansion and not leave until they have come to a resolution of the challenges facing this state and its people, but the notion that we should amend our constitution to enable the removal of one official with one voice in the process is foolhardy and dangerous.”

Three journalism experts I checked with – RICHARD ROTH, senior associate dean at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University; CHARLIE WHEELER, director of the Public Affairs Reporting program at the University of Illinois at Springfield; and MIKE LAWRENCE, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University – all said that newspapers have a perfect right to take such a tough editorial-page position.

“They can lead public opinion, set the public agenda,” Roth said of newspapers. “That’s their responsibility to do that.”

However, Lawrence and Wheeler both said that, despite the issues involving Blagojevich, they don’t support recall, because politicians already are too afraid of taking principled but unpopular stands.

“It’s been said for a long time that politicians are focused on the next election,” Lawrence said, “and if we enact recall, I’m worried that they will … become even more short-sighted.

“One thing Illinois doesn’t need any more of,” Wheeler said, “is government based on expediency.”

If Blagojevich is enjoying the discussion he’s generated, then he’s even more self-centered than I thought.

Bernard Schoenburg can be reached at 788-1440 or bernard.schoenburg@sj-r.com.